Category Archives: Teachers

The dog days of August are here. Most Colorado K-12 schools are gearing up for the 2010-11 year, while a few already are underway. August and September are a very busy time for those who work in our public schools. That’s why it shouldn’t be a surprise that for many teachers it’s the only time of year they have to make choices about their professional memberships. Yesterday my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow spent an hour on 850 KOA’s Mike Rosen Show to discuss the little-known phenomenon of school employee union opt-out windows. You can listen to his conversation with guest host Jon Caldara here. Depending on which school district they work in, many Colorado teachers and classified employees have only a short few weeks or less each year to choose to stop their union membership and payroll dues deduction — even though they can opt in any time. (In a few school districts, teachers and other employees who don’t belong to the union have to fill out a letter or form each year to opt out of union dues.) And in most cases, those opt-out windows fall during the busy beginning of the school year. One teacher called […]

So now that the Colorado State Board of Education has signed on to Common Core Standards, the question is what are the state’s chances to win up to $175 million in federal funds from Race to the Top (RTTT) Round 2? Thanks to Ed News Colorado’s Daily Churn, I learned that the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has given Colorado’s latest RTTT proposal a green light (thanks in no small part to SB 191). So what does that mean? If recent history is our guide, then we should go back to March and look at NCTQ’s forecast from the first round of RTTT. Delaware, Rhode Island and Tennessee were the only three states to receive green lights; Delaware and Tennessee ended up the only two states to come home with the money. This time around there figure to be plenty more winners. So the fact that Colorado is one of only three states (Louisiana and Rhode Island are the others) plus Washington, D.C., to receive the coveted green light means our state is a virtual shoo-in for the federal dollars. What kind of valuable, long-term positive impacts would Colorado experience in the highly likely scenario of being an RTTT […]

I don’t have time to rehash why Congress’ education jobs bailout bill doesn’t make any sense. I just don’t have time. The beach beckons. You know, summer vacation and all that. What once was a $23 billion bailout is now only a $10 billion bailout. (Phew! For awhile I thought we were talking about real money there.) After lingering on Capitol Hill for months, the decision to spend more money the federal government doesn’t have faces smooth sailing now that 61 Senators agreed to close the debate. Some of the same people who insist teachers across the board are underpaid also hope you can’t do the math. As the Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke points out, the touted number of teacher jobs to be saved (100,000) means the cost for each job is approximately $100,000. Are teachers getting paid really well? Or is the rest of the money paying bureaucrats or buying political favors? I may be young, but I’m not naive enough to expect any serious answers. Of course, Mike Antonucci also has done the research and reporting to show that the estimates of layoff numbers are overblown as many teachers across the country are being rehired. Does this mean […]

Colorado has been a national leader in public school choice. One of the small facets of that choice is the Innovation School concept pioneered by a 2008 state law. These public schools or school districts can seek waivers from some state laws to have more flexibility in program and/or personnel policies. Up till now, the handful of schools that have sought and received Innovation School status are all located in Denver, designed to serve challenging urban student populations. But in the 2008 law’s own pioneer spirit, the tiny rural Kit Carson School District on the Eastern Plains is changing the trend. On the newest iVoices podcast (click here to listen to the MP3 in another window), Kit Carson superintendent Gerald Keefe talks about his district’s Innovation waiver proposal to be brought before the State Board of Education in coming months. Rather than wait for the groundbreaking new SB 191 to go into effect, Kit Carson has some ideas of its own how to implement a more performance-based teacher evaluation and dismissal system. In any case, it’s good to be reminded that innovation comes in all shapes and sizes — and population densities.

From Michigan comes today’s reminder that education “reform” does not always mean real reform. History teacher Ryan McCarl writes for the Education Report that a new bill in his state designed to promote alternative teacher certification, well, really does very little or anything of the kind. In fact, he calls it “meaningless”: The text of House Bill 5596 exhibits a continuing addiction to strict state regulation of the teacher labor market and a fundamental lack of trust in the capacity of local school officials to use their professional judgment to evaluate prospective teachers on a case-by-case basis, just as hiring professionals do in most fields in the private sector. Michigan policymakers continue to presume that traditional certification provides some sort of quality guarantee that alternative certification does not. But this position is not supported by either evidence or logic.

I’m getting caught up once again on the news today. And yes, I have to say it, Washington D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee has done my heart good again — she who has helped to inspire my radical education reform side. She remains serious about getting the job done, and even the big Time Magazine cover story a year and a half ago hasn’t slowed her down (I guess they don’t have curses like Sports Illustrated does.) Anyway, given one of the toughest job assignments out there, Rhee continues to do great things. Two examples have graced the news pages recently: The Washington Times reported that Rhee is backing vouchers for special-needs D.C. students in the style of Florida’s successful McKay Scholarship program. Matt Ladner explains how such a program would save the school district money while increasing parental satisfaction and improving programs through competition. Congress pulled funding from the voucher program for D.C.’s poor students, but Rhee isn’t letting that be an excuse to give up on school choice. Then, just a couple days later, the Washington Post reported that Rhee used her upgraded IMPACT evaluation system and newly negotiated powers to remove 165 ineffective teachers from the classroom […]

Last Tuesday I told you about the need to focus on replicating great teaching rather than shrinking class sizes. The post basically did the following: Noted that, according to research by Mike Antonucci, Colorado has been an exception by not hiring faster than student enrollment growth Point readers to an Education Next podcast highlighting the research on effective teaching techniques by Doug Lemov and Steven Farr Connected Lemov’s and Farr’s ideas to Colorado’s statutory push to enhance educator effectiveness So how surprised was I to read this new Colorado Daily piece by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow that well, basically makes the same points?

Writing over at Education Next, experts Emily Cohen and Kate Walsh explain how reformers should be focused on changing the levers of state policy to improve the quality of teaching, rather than grousing about what locally-negotiated collective bargaining contracts won’t allow them to do. In their piece “Invisible Ink in Teacher Contracts”, Cohen and Walsh pour the spotlight on our backyard: No legislative success, however, trumps that achieved in Colorado in May 2010. The perfect storm—a charismatic, Democratic legislator who is a Teach For America alumnus, the lure of Race to the Top funds, and a whole array of advocacy groups that included the Colorado chapters of Democrats for Education Reform and Stand For Children—pulled off teacher legislation that was bitterly opposed by the state union and which no one dreamed possible a year ago. The success of SB 191 is becoming conventional wisdom nationwide, and it’s hard to disagree about its national significance — even if the implementation of the bill is slow and its actual effects promise to be somewhat modest. Maybe the best news s that Colorado achieved this remarkable legislative success despite the fact our state tends more than most toward the local control end of […]

You’ve got to hand it to the teachers unions. They have so many people conditioned to call for more teachers and smaller class sizes as the leading remedy for what ails public schools. The tide slowly is turning to a greater realization of what the abundance of research shows us: namely, that the quality of the individual teacher is far more important than small differences in class sizes. But what can policy makers do about it? Are great teachers just born that way, and we need to do more to import their natural gifts into the education system? Or are there practical skills and mechanics that teachers can learn from their peers who have achieved remarkable success in the classroom? With plenty of teaching experience between them, authors Doug Lemov (Teach Like a Champion) and Steven Farr (Teaching as Leadership) make a strong case for the latter. The 12 minutes it takes to listen to the two authors’ new Education Next podcast interview with Michael Petrilli is a worthwhile investment of time for anyone truly concerned about how to make our schools better.

It’s the middle of July. It’s hot outside. If they’re not swimming in the pool, people are more interested in political scandals than education stories. That’s too bad. Whether we realize it or not, I’m beginning to believe I am lucky enough to be coming of age during a truly transformational time in public schooling and education reform. I mean now. On that note, here are a couple of items I stumbled across today that may not seem to go together. Maybe it’s kind of a hodgepodge, but so what? First, in the Wall Street Journal (H/T Matt Ladner), John Fund’s Political Diary highlights a speech made by mega-billionaire Bill Gates right here in Colorado at the Aspen Ideas Festival: